Aqua Marcia

Is it worth the trip?

As a single destination, no: there is no site to walk round and nothing to enter, and in the Parco degli Acquedotti the arches that catch the eye are the Aqua Claudia’s. As part of something else, yes. Porta Tiburtina is a city gate with Augustus’s name cut into it, and the Marcia’s arches in the Parco degli Acquedotti come with the walk past the Claudia’s, so they are worth seeking out there. Rome’s tourism portal gives the aqueduct no opening hours, only “closed to the public”; the stretches in the city named above are seen from the street or the park.

Getting there

For the Parco degli Acquedotti, the entrance is on Via Lemonia, near the Giulio Agricola and Sub Augusta stops of Metro line A; for Tor Fiscale, the nearest Metro A stop is Porta Furba (parcodegliacquedotti.it). The map point by Porta Furba has two ATAC bus stops within 170 m; the car parks mapped nearby are private or for customers only (OpenStreetMap).

The park is open from dawn to sunset. Its information point opens on Sundays and closes in January, February, July and August (Turismo Roma, read 21 October 2026). Nothing here is ticketed.

History

By the middle of the 2nd century BC Rome’s first two aqueducts were run down and drained by illegal pipes, and the Senate decided to build a new one, longer than the others and able to bring water up to the Capitoline Hill. The work was given to the praetor Quintus Marcius Rex, after whom it is named, and his term was extended so that he could finish it; it was paid for largely from the spoils of the conquest of Corinth and the destruction of Carthage, both in 146 BC (en.wikipedia). Bringing the water to the Capitol was disputed on the strength of a passage in the Sibylline Books, but the Senate let it go ahead (en.wikipedia; fr.wikipedia).

The water was the reason for the effort. The Marcia drew directly from a spring rather than the river, and its water was counted the best that reached Rome; Pliny the Elder called it “clarissima aquarum omnium”, the clearest of all waters (it.wikipedia). It was the first of Rome’s aqueducts to enter the city on arches (en.wikipedia). Published figures for that arched stretch run from about 9.6 to 11 km (fr.wikipedia; en.wikipedia), and the arches were later shared with the Aqua Tepula and the Aqua Julia (en.wikipedia).

It needed constant care. Agrippa repaired it in 33 BC, and Augustus rebuilt much of it between 11 and 4 BC, adding a second spring, the Aqua Augusta, that roughly doubled the flow (en.wikipedia; it.wikipedia). Private diversions had reduced it to a trickle in the city by Nero’s time; later emperors raised the supply again (en.wikipedia). Around AD 97 Frontinus measured it as the second largest of the city’s water supplies (en.wikipedia; de.wikipedia). Further repairs came under Titus, Hadrian and Septimius Severus; Caracalla added a new spring and the branch to his baths, another branch fed the Baths of Diocletian, and the last works, probably under Arcadius and Honorius, belong to the early 5th century, shortly before the city’s whole water system was abandoned (it.wikipedia; en.wikipedia; Turismo Roma).

The spring has outlived the aqueduct. Pope Pius IX had the aqueduct restored, and it was inaugurated again on 10 September 1870 (it.wikipedia); the same springs still supply a modern aqueduct for Rome (en.wikipedia; de.wikipedia).